I teach English and I write, mostly about horse racing, for the Blood-Horse, New York Breeder, the Saratogian, Hello Race Fans!, Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred, The Racing Biz, and the Brooklyn Heights Blog. My work has also appeared in the Daily Racing Form, Thoroughbred Times, the New York Daily News, and BelmontStakes.com. A former and erstwhile resident of Saratoga Springs, New York, I’ve lived in Brooklyn for more than a decade, and when I’m not teaching or writing, I’m watching the Rangers at the Garden, playing Scrabble, or rescuing cats.

At Fox Sports 1, Racing May Actually Include Gambling

Watch most telecasts of horse racing and you’ll hear little about gambling, the sport’s primary revenue stream. You’ll sometimes see the odds, and analysts/handicappers will make picks, but if you want to actually make a bet, you’d have no idea how to go about it.

With the advent of racing coverage on FoxFox Sports 1, that may be about to change, according to Mike Mulvihill, the senior vice president of programming and research for FOX Sports Media Group.

The network launched earlier this month, and on August 8, The Jockey Club announced a multi-year agreement with FS1 to air a series of graded stakes races beginning in 2014. The series will include up to 10 telecasts a year.

The Jockey Club’s press release included a statement from FOX Sports Executive Vice President of Production and Executive Producer John Entz, who said that there are “few events in sports…as much fun as a day at a great racetrack. Our partnership with The Jockey Club highlights the elements that make horse racing fun: the power and grace of the Thoroughbred, the challenging puzzle of handicapping, and the social aspect of a day at the races.”

During a presentation at The Jockey Club Round Table in Saratoga Springs, New York on August 12, Mulvihill said that one of the goals of the network’s racing coverage is to develop occasional viewers of racing into “more regular viewers and players,” using a term commonly used to describe bettors.

“Racing’s appeal,” said Mulvihill, “is in both the visceral power of the thoroughbred and the data-rich challenge of handicapping.”

The decline in national handle at racetracks is often attributed to an aversion to the complexity of betting on horse racing and synthesizing multiple types of data on multiple horses in a race, particularly when other types of gambling require far less effort and intellectual endeavor.

FS 1, it seems, wants to celebrate that complexity and plans to incorporate it, according to Mulvihill, into its telecasts.

“We’re orienting our broadcasts,” he said, “not for people with no familiarity with the sport, but for people who have some understanding and appreciation of it, to draw them deeper into it.

“We’re going to balance entertainment and education, teaching people the finer points of the game and how to handicap.”

Newcomers to the track often say that they are daunted by past performances, the staple of handicapping a race and picking a winner. Mulvihill hopes that the FS 1 broadcasts will include past performances, to teach viewers how to handicap and wager themselves.

Stressing that the first broadcast is nearly six months away, Mulvihill didn’t offer specifics on either the programing or the on-air talent, but did say that he expected the broadcasts to do a “little deeper dive” into reading past performances and structuring wagers.

Though the bulk of money bet on horse races is at off-track simulcast facilities or through advance deposit wagering accounts (ADWs), network broadcasts have not included information for viewers about how to place a bet if they’re watching from home. Mulvihill said that FS 1 has already had extended conversations with The Jockey Club to determine the legality of doing business with ADWs and expects to see more mention of betting than has been done in the past.

As for the telecasts themselves, viewers of a certain age might remember the infamous Fox glow puck, the orange tail emitted from the puck when Fox began televising National Hockey League games in the 90s. Though Mulvihill said that he expected to experiment with ways of making a race more accessible for newcomers, he did not, he said, anticipate the introduction of a glow horse or a glow jockey.

The FS 1 series is expected to focus on older horses, not the three-year-olds that garner so much attention during the Triple Crown, though it’s possible that horses involved in the Fox races will be familiar to viewers from their Triple Crown expereince. The series will debut on Sunday, February 9 with a broadcast from Gulfstream Park in Florida, featuring the Grade 1 Donn Handicap and Grade 1 Gulfstream Park Turk Handicap.

The series is also expected to feature races from Santa Anita Park and Del Mar in California; Keeneland Race Course in Kentucky; Woodbine Racetrack in Ontario; and Saratoga Race Course in New York.

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